The Job Role As A Reference Category For The Design Of Continuing Education In Production Companies

Abstract

For effective Continuing Vocational Education and Training (CVET), a field of reference is needed. This can either be established through the concept of occupation (CO) or the actual job role. The concept of occupation can sociologically be understood as a community of practice of specialized people with particular qualifications and competences and therefore perform subtasks of larger groups and communities. “Members of this specialized community of practice gain knowledge about work processes, how to optimize procedures, and develop specific tools” [1]. Occupations are defined as social forms, whose members are similar to each other and different from others [2]. Organizational professions are understood as bundles of skills. The Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany (Kultusministerkonferenz, KMK) suggests a Concept of Capacity to Act (CCA) which can serve as an instruction for further vocational education. It is described as the individual's willingness and ability to behave in professional and social situations in an appropriately thought-out and individually and socially responsible manner [3] The CCA comprises the components of professional, social and personal competence, linked by methodological, learning and communication competence. These competence dimensions denote a leitmotif for the professional learning activities and processes. The occupation serves as a frame of reference for further education and training activities in the case of the professional community of practice, which is based on a group of people working in the field, with identical or very similar training and similar experiential process knowledge. These parameters can be used as a basis for the instructional design of competence development. Many jobs – most commonly in the field of academic positions in companies and organizations – are not defined by the CO, but by the actual job role. In production companies, employees who need to be addressed by the job role tend to work in fields like Research and Development or product design, whereas jobs that are structured by the CO can be found in production or logistics. People who execute a certain job role have various courses of study, professional experience, and competences. In contrast to jobs referring to the concept of vocation, there is no reference framework which can be used as a reference to design CVET. This has a direct impact on the didactics and instructional design, the skill and competence development in CVET. Due to the variation of knowledge and previous education, it is not possible in these cases to refer to a common training content. In these cases, CVET is not standardized in the same way as in the case of the occupations. Therefore, competence development goals cannot be structured in the same way. This raises the question on application of didactic and learning-theoretical basic categories to the conception of further training formats for this group of employees. However, it is still unclear if the job role as a category can be used as a frame of reference for CVET in a similar way as the CCA. The impact of the CCA and the job role on the learning theory and instructional design of CVET programs and competence development is evaluated in this article.